Intestinal Parasites Are Picky With Their ‘Living Quarters’, Prefers Animals With Similar Guts

A recent study showed intestinal parasites are picky regarding their living quarters. Related parasite species are inclined to congregate in animals whose guts are the same.

A Scientific American report specified that intestinal parasites infect herbivores with the same digestive systems.

If a goat and a hippo are walking into a watering hole on the savanna, they could end up sharing quite more than simply a drink.

Essentially, intestinal parasites spread through food and water can inflict damage that ranges from stunted growth to starvation and death.

DNA Barcodes Identified

To forecast how such worms might spread in places like central Kenya and where wild and domestic herbivores increasingly mingle, scientists are attempting to understand better which parasites live in which species and why.

By chemically examining more than 500 fecal specimens from 17 herbivore species, researchers were able to identify snippets of parasite genes known as DNA barcodes to catalog the parasite populations possibly living in the guts of the animals.

The 80 or so types of worms the researchers reported in their research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal appeared to be split between two types of digestive systems.

Some were trapped in simple, single-chambered stomachs, while others opted for the multi-chambered ones like camels and cows have.

Animals with Similar Digestive System

Even unrelated species like donkeys and elephants, which have little in common except for their one-chambered stomachs, had genetically akin parasites, suggesting such mammals might cause infection to one another.

Knowing which worms are living helps farmers and conservation experts manage the spread of parasites.

Many farmers in Kenya have recently swapped cows for drought-resistant livestock, including camels, in response to prolonged dry seasons.

Even though camels are genetically very different from their new neighbors in the savanna, they share parasites with many domestic and wild animals, specifically cows.

Multi-Chambered Stomachs Shared

Ninety percent of camels sampled were found to have parasites, compared with a 65-percent average for other species that share multi-chambered stomachs.

According to Georgia Titcomb, the study's lead author and a disease ecologist at the Unversity of California, Santa Barbara.

Based on her study findings, local wildlife managers have decided to have camels in the study area dewormed to shield animals like giraffes, whose numbers are dropping.

Most parasite researchers use slow, costly processes like culling animals or combing through feces under a microscope for parasite eggs to identify the intestinal worms.

Examining Mammal Viruses

Minimus DNA barcodes, Titcomb and her team, could have gotten such a full picture of the population of the parasite, a similar BBC Tech report specified.

Disease ecologist Sebastian Calvignac-Spencer, at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, who was not part of the research, said he does not think these are the right tools to ask the kinds of questions, like what's determining the construction of parasite communities.

Calvignac-Spenser may not be part of this work, but he uses DNA barcodes to examine mammal viruses. The two researchers hope such an approach will gain traction among parasitologists.

Related information about digestion in grass-eating animals is shown on Macmillan Education India's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Parasites in Science Times